Analysis of Ignorance
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
Oh happy he who cannot see
With scientific eyes;
Who does not know how flowers grow,
And is not planet wise;
Content to find with simple mind
Joys as they are:
To whom a rose is just a rose,
A star--a star.
It is not good, I deem, to brood
On things beyond our ken;
A rustic I would live and die,
Aloof from learned men;
And laugh and sing with zest of Spring
In life's exultant scene,--
For vain my be philosophy,
And what does meaning mean?
I'm talking rot,--I'm really not
As dumb as I pretend;
But happiness, I dimly guess,
Is what counts in the end.
To educate is to dilate
The nerves of pain:
So let us give up books and live
Like hinds again.
The best of wisdom surely is
To be not overwise;
For may not thought be evil fraught,
And truth less kind than lies?
So let me praise the golden days
I played a gay guitar,
And deemed a rose was just a rose,
A star--a star.
Scheme | abxbxcdC xexexfaf xgxgxxxe xaxbxcdC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011101 10101 11111101 011101 10111101 1111 11011101 0101 11111111 1101101 01011101 01111 01011111 010101 11110100 011101 11011101 111101 11001101 111001 1101101 0111 11111101 1101 01110101 1111 11111101 011111 11110101 110101 01011101 0101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 952 |
Words | 179 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 165 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 99 Views
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"Ignorance" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32179/ignorance>.
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